Need I post this? ....probably not, but I'm going to anyway. I don't think I like that many poems, and I certainly don't pretend to have any authority on the subject, but I think this is one of the best ever written. I guess it's kind of famous but I don't think that makes it rubbish.

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,And towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumblingFitting the clumsy helmets just in time,But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. --Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungsBitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Larkin is brilliant! Morrissey was inspired by him, no less? My favourite poem by his is the prestiged High Windows.

High Windows

When I see a couple of kidsAnd guess he's fucking her and she'sTaking pills or wearing a diaphragm,I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--Bonds and gestures pushed to one sideLike an outdated combine harvester,And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder ifAnyone looked at me, forty years back,And thought, That'll be the life;No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hideWhat you think of the priest. HeAnd his lot will all go down the long slideLike free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Here's a few of my other favourite poems.. which I studied in english literature in school I do believe:

Havisham by Carol Anne DuffyBeloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since thenI haven't wished him dead. Prayed for itso hard I've dark green pebbles for eyes,ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.

Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole daysin bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dressyellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this

to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.Some nights better, the lost body over me,my fluent tongue in its mouth in its earthen down till suddenly bite awake. Love's

hate behind a white veil; a red balloon burstingin my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.

Havisham is a character from Great Expectations by Dickens. Never read it, heard she's captured the character pretty well though tbh. I can't concentrate on Dickens.. pretty difficult reading I find.

I am very bothered by Simon Armitage

I am very bothered when I thinkof the bad things I have done in my life.Not least that time in the chemistry labwhen I held a pair of scissors by the bladesand played the handlesin the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;then called your name, and handed them over.

Don't believe me, please, if I saythat was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,of asking you if you would marry me.

I didn't study this, but I studied Simon Armitage and I really liked his poetry and have since bought a book, this is in one of them and I like it.. because it has many different sides to it, including I think, quite a humorous one.

I think we studied all those poets in school for GCSE. Armitage is dead brilliant, there's a poem that starts 'those bastards in their mansions' that is just....really good. And his stuff is funny as well, and not too difficult- like the Nick Hornby of poetry.

elko wrote:I think we studied all those poets in school for GCSE. Armitage is dead brilliant, there's a poem that starts 'those bastards in their mansions' that is just....really good. And his stuff is funny as well, and not too difficult- like the Nick Hornby of poetry.

I find it doesn't challenge me too much. Sometimes you don't want to sit and analyse you wan't to understand and get the point. I think he has the ability to do this, but at the same time not make what he's trying to dull. I remember that, that's a pretty strong viewed poem eh? I love "Mother any distance greater than a single span" as well. I studied it for an essay.

In a music magazine that came out a few months ago (Mojo?), they did a short section on the poets that influenced Morrissey - Larkin being one of them. I think they cited the following as being rather Larkin-esque:

Oh, the last bus I missed to Maudlin StreetSo he drove me home in the VanComplaining, "Women only like me for my mind..."Don't leave your torch behindA powercut ahead; 1972, you know

Anyway, I find both Larkin and Morrissey's personalities to be so similar. It's almost eerie.

Havisham is one of my favourite poems also ... I'm guessing we all studied the same GCSE syllabus ...

<span style='color:blue'>"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi</span>

elko wrote:Are all these poems gonna be from the AQA Eng Lang syllabus? :rolleyes:

Just kidding, it's a good poem. And cause you study it, you get to understand it easier. Like that one about the nine o clock news, that's good an all.

I guess they are ...

Did anyone see the video of John Agard 'performing' Half Caste? 'Twas funny ... Anyway, the poem "Vultures" had some great lines:

"Praise bounteousprovidence if you willthat grants even an ogrea tiny glow-wormtenderness encapsulatedin icy caverns of a cruelheart or else despairfor in every germof that kindred love islodged the perpetuityof evil."

Perfect ...

<span style='color:blue'>"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi</span>

Oh I remember Vultures! Excellent poem, I loved Nothings' Changed too... we should probably get out of the AQA book now, but it is a very good collection of poems and studying them in school means you can appreciate them.